Outline of Episcopi Vagantes(Under Construction: last
changed on 10/15/2007
- still much to be added and
even more proof-reading to be done)

By "independent Roman Catholic priests" I do
not mean clergymen with a self-proclaimed ministry, even if they do
call themselves "Catholic" or "Roman Catholic," nor do I mean those
clergymen calling themselves "Catholic" or "Roman Catholic" who claim
"apostolic succession" via the so-called Old Catholic Churches of
Europe, especially the many North American clergy with orders
descending from Arnold Harris
Mathew (1852-1919).

Such "Old Catholic" or "Eastern Church"
lineages are the sources for the claimed "apostolic succession" of
the vast majority of those clergy in the United States not in
communion with the Vatican's hierarchy who say that they have valid
"Catholic" orders.

Anyone coming across a congregation lead by any
such clergyman can easily obtain, from almost any good library,
excellent histories and analyses of the originating communions,
sufficient to demonstrate that the congregation can in no sense be
truly Roman Catholic.

Furthermore, I do not include in this
discussion those clergymen claiming valid "Catholic" orders through
some "Eastern Rite" bishop of the Roman Catholic Church, particularly
those clergy claiming apostolic succession via Antoine Joseph
Aneed (1881-1970) and his reported
consecrator, Archbishop Méléce Sawoya
(1870-1919) of the (Melkite Catholic) Patriarchate of Antioch and All
the East, or via Antoine
Lefberne (1862-1942) and his reported
consecrator, Maran Mar Joseph
Emmanuel II Thomas (1900-1947), the (Chaldean
Catholic) Patriarch of Babylon. These so-called "Eastern Rite"
Catholic cases are both few and problematic; and the validity of
their orders is best left to experts to determine on individual
bases.

What I do want to talk about are those clergy
who claim priestly and/or episcopal orders via certain indisputably
Roman Catholic bishops, i.e., bishops who - in the last
hundred years - broke with the Vatican's authorities, for one reason
or another, and later consecrated bishops of their own.

There are alive to-day many men (and even
women) claiming to be priests validly ordained, and/or bishops
validly consecrated, by such Roman Catholic bishops (or by the many
"independent" bishops who were subsequently consecrated by
them).

The bishops and the priests in these lineages
really do cover the theological spectrum, ranging all the way from
the "certainly valid" through the "doubtful" to the "certainly
invalid." They can be grouped in nine distinct lineages, each
descending from that small number of Roman Catholic bishops who in
the 20th Century broke with the Vatican.

The first five of these "lineage groups" are
small, with each comprising but a very few consecrations.

The other four "lineage groups," however, are
much more complicated, with each comprising many scores of
consecrations.

For all nine "lineage groups," though, I have
set forth all the claimed "succession lines" - i.e., not only through the
reported "principal consecrators," but also through the
"co-consecrators" (whenever there were such).
.

I. The Concise
Lineages:

For each of the
following five lineages, the data has been easily acquired and
(because the numbers of consecrations very few) easy to
chart.

Three of the following
four lineages comprise several scores of clergymen, all claiming
valid "Catholic" orders. Many of these clergymen, however, have
transferred repeatedly from one denomination to another, often even
exchanging sub conditione consecrations among each other, thereby making very
difficult the charting of their claimed lines of "apostolic
succession."

The last of these four lineages involves the
dozen Chinese bishops who in the 1950s , under pressure from the
Communists occupying the mainland of China, established a "patriotic"
hierarchy supposedly independent of the Pope. Reportedly, though,
these days almost 80% of these so-called "Patriotic" bishops are
secretly maintaining relations with the Vatican.